


Kind of Tough to Tell a Scruff (Stand and Deliver)

by sunsetmog



Category: BBC Radio 1 RPF, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, First Time, Getting Together, M/M, Sexuality Crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-12-07 17:30:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20979683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsetmog/pseuds/sunsetmog
Summary: There must be one good thing about your new place.Nick considers for a while.There's a fit bloke lives down my hall, he types finally.In which Nick moves north and Louis lives next door.





	Kind of Tough to Tell a Scruff (Stand and Deliver)

**Author's Note:**

> "What would you like for your birthday fic?" I said last night, "and you'd better give me a prompt because at the moment all I can think about is Louis the tiny, grumpy tree gnome who farms mushrooms, and has tiny, grumpy tree gnome wellingtons and a silly hat, and quite frankly, no one wants to read that, and that's the only plot I have for it."
> 
> I don't know why I was thinking about tiny tree gnomes either, but luckily this is not that story, and Louis the tiny tree gnome is shelved for another day. (We can all breathe a little easier now). 
> 
> Anyway, here is a little story about Nick moving to Leeds after a break up, and Louis the boy next door. Happy birthday, Anitra! Sorry it's a day late. 
> 
> Title is from Adam and the Ant's Stand and Deliver, which also includes multiple repetitions of this line: _(Stand and Deliver) Da diddly qua qua (Your Money Or Your Life) Da diddly qua qua_ but luckily I went for something else.

_i hate it here_, Nick texts, when he's been in his new flat for four days and the walls have started to close in around him. _it's rubbish and i want to come back._

_tough luck kiddo_, Aims texts back. _We've rented your room out_. 

Nick flops back onto the sofa and stares up at the ceiling, which is vaguely marred by a few damp spots. He considers, for a moment, just waiting here until the roof falls in on him, but he hasn't got the attention span for any prolonged period of hanging around. 

_it can't be that bad_, Amy's next message says, which essentially means that Nick should get off his arse and text her back. _You were excited about going last week_. 

Last week was another country, though, and Nick might have been practically chomping at the bit to leave London and his rubbish ex-boyfriend and his particularly long period of unemployment behind him last Friday, but now he's been in Leeds for what feels like forever and it's all fucking rubbish. 

_Grim_. Another message. _Don't make me call you like it's 1999_. 

_I'm here_, Nick texts back. _Just bemoaning the state of my life. _

_There must be one good thing about your new place._

Nick considers for a while. _There's a fit bloke lives down my hall_, he types finally. _Well, fit-ish. I was dragging my suitcase up the stairs and he sort of nodded at me on the way down. Pretty sure he had a black eye_. 

_Sounds like a winner_, Amy messages. _Hang on in there. It'll get better. You'll like the job and shag the fit boy._

_He's probably straight_, Nick grumbles, and tries not to think too much about having to go to work again in the morning. 

~*~

The fit lad is straight; Nick is woken up on Friday night by someone banging into the door of his flat, and when he opens the door (on the chain, natch) to check if there's a murder going on, he discovers the fit lad down the hall pressing a girl with long blonde hair against the wall and kissing her. Classily, he's got one hand on her boob and the other trying to get his key in the Yale lock, and Nick, reluctantly, is rather impressed by his co-ordination. The last time he'd brought someone home, it had been his ex-boyfriend, and they'd had a whole five more days left of their relationship. Nick hadn't known that at the time, but perhaps he should have been able to put two and two together, because when he'd looked up from the blowjob he was giving with a degree of drunken enthusiasm, he'd found Chris checking Twitter on his phone. 

"Oi, you perv," the girl says, catching him watching them. "Get your kicks somewhere else."

"Sorry," Nick says. "But you crashed right into my door."

The girl looks unrepentant. 

"Soz," the fit lad says, but he's bundling the girl inside, kissing her again as they kick the door shut after them. 

"Well," Nick says, to nobody in particular. "This is cool. Everything's cool. I love living here."

Leeds is turning out exactly how he'd imagined. 

~*~

His job trundles along. It's finally the job in radio he's been gunning for all these years, but he'd rather imagined the highs of playing music with a hangover on Radio 1, instead of producer's assistant on a talk slot on Radio Leeds. He counts some stuff in and out, but mostly he's trying to ascertain if any of the callers are out and out racists or belong in prison instead of spouting their claptrap opinions in one of the lesser slots on the BBC's regional output. He sees the fit lad from down the hall a couple of times in the stairwell, the two of them always going different directions. The fit lad sports a baseball cap one time and a hoodie pulled down low the other, so there's not even any good gossip about the state of his black eye. 

Nick, who usually finds it relatively easy to spark up a conversation with practically anyone, fails to find any sentence other than a sort of half-swallowed _hey_, which goes someway to explaining just how fit the fit lad is to him, and also how long it's been since he's had a gossip with his friends. 

Fuck, he misses London. 

Saturday coincides with the two month anniversary of his break up with Chris, so he does what any self-respecting guy with no friends to commiserate with does, and drinks a bottle of wine whilst laying sprawled out on his sofa whilst listening to Florence and the Machine at top volume. 

The fit lad next door is probably out picking another hot girl to bring home with him, so he's not going to mind the soundtrack to Nick's misery pounding through the wall of a Saturday night, so Nick continues with his descent into performative misery, and eats a four pack of Twix bars and puts the album on repeat. 

He gets bored after a bit, so wraps a few scarves around him in a vaguely drunken attempt to channel Florence Welch, and considers burning some sage to get rid of Chris from his life for good. He hasn't got any real sage, because who has actual real sage, but he does huddle on his tiny balcony, wrapped in his scarves with the music blaring, and tips the remainder of his jar of mixed herbs into an ash tray and lights it. 

He records it for Instagram, because he can, and then he chain-smokes his way through the last three cigarettes in his crumpled pack, and necks some of the Lambrini Gells had given him for a laugh when he left.

He's fast approaching thirty, and all he has to show for it is half a bottle of Lambrini and an empty jar of mixed herbs. Everything is fine. It's all fine. 

~*~

His hangover, as it turns out, is not fine. 

He crawls out of the flat at midday on Sunday, because if he doesn't buy some fucking ibuprofen and a shit load of caffeine there's a very good chance he might die, and because there's a rather startling aroma of burnt mixed herbs following him around at home. 

He's wearing tracksuit bottoms and an overcoat over his Britney t-shirt, which is about as much as he can consider in the general 'getting up and dressed' category of his life right now. 

It is entirely appropriate that the fit lad is sitting on the wall outside their building, miserably smoking a cigarette. Nick attempts to blend in with the brickwork because his pores are probably the size of Yorkshire and he hasn't done a face mask in weeks, and because he's about as hungover as he can remember being, and is graced with only the briefest of glances from the fit lad, which is probably for the best, all things considered. 

Then Nick traipses down the road to the Tesco Express, purchases a packet of 16 ibuprofen and a packet of 16 paracetamol, a small bottle of Tropicana, a multipack of fun size chocolate bars, two bags of prawn cocktail crisps, a bottle of coke, a bottle of diet coke, a chilled cafe latte, some dairy free espresso cold brew, a tin of baked beans with sausages, a loaf of bread, and a jar of Nescafe Azera, because he doesn't entirely think he's up to anything but boiling the kettle, and traipses back down the road to his flat. 

The fit lad is still sitting there, but if it's possible, he's looking even more miserable than Nick feels. 

"Big night last night?" Nick asks, for want of something better to do with his life than humiliating himself in front of hot neighbours. 

The lad glances at him. He has violet shadows under his eyes. Nick wonders if they're reflected on his face. He's not looking the best he's ever looked. "Not really," he says. "How about you?"

"Ehhh," Nick says, which he hopes covers the salient points of 'break up - wine - Florence Welch - scarves - burnt Italian seasoning'. "It had its moments."

"Cool," the lad says. He taps the ash off of his cigarette. 

"Do you want some paracetamol?" Nick asks, sitting down on the wall next to him and rooting in his bag for the Tropicana. 

The lad laughs. "What the fuck are you, some kind of rubbish drug dealer or what? Offering me paracetamol."

"I don't know about you," Nick says, "but I'm fucking hungover as hell, so I'm having the paracetamol."

The lad looks at him. "All right then, whatever. Might as well. Give us some here."

Nick busies himself popping out two caplets from the blister pack and opening the mini bottle of Tropicana. He knocks the pills back and then offers both the paracetamol and the orange juice to the lad. He does this despite knowing he doesn't like sharing drinks. He doesn't know this lad and his habits. 

The lad, however, has a mug of tea cunningly hidden behind a decorative plant frond on the wall next to him, and waves away the Tropicana. 

Afterwards, they sit in silence for a minute, and Nick contemplates the general futility of life and existence and philosophy and shit like that. It doesn't actually solve anything, least of all his headache. "I'm Nick," he says finally. "I think I live next door to you."

"Louis," the fit lad says. "And yes, you do."

"Cool," Nick says. 

"Cool," Louis says. "Are Florence and the Machine nights something you do a lot, or what?"

All of Nick's insides gently and carefully shrivel up in one fluid movement. "Uh," he says. "Depends on the occasion."

"Last night was an occasion?"

"An anniversary," Nick says. "Of being dumped. Hence the wine hangover."

"Oh," Louis says. He glances at Nick again. "You still love her?"

"Him," Nick says, with some degree of muted surprise, given that he'd thought his love of dick was relatively easy to ascertain. "And no, not really. Loved the idea of us, you know? Was half way to planning a marriage and a gayby, but it turns out he was just plugging a gap until his real boyfriend came home."

"Not very nice," Louis says. 

"No," Nick says. "It wasn't."

"Sorry," Louis says, which is nice of him. Then, "You're gay, then?" which may or may not be nice of him, but Nick's too hungover to properly guess Louis's motivations. 

"Very," Nick says. 

"Okay," Louis says. There's another pause. "I couldn't get it up last night."

It's possible, Nick considers, that he didn't actually drink _enough_ wine last night. 

"Kind of fucked up the mood a bit," Louis says. "Me there with my dick out, her half naked and everything, me not turned on in the slightest."

"Right," Nick says, because they've been friends for a good two minutes now and much of that has been confusing. 

"Did it in the end, though," Louis says, like Nick's not sat there in some kind of stupefied silence. "Thought about Captain America and then, well. Lift off."

"Right," Nick says again. "So, um."

"Bit embarrassing, really. Me not being able to get it up unless I'm thinking about a lad."

"Not really," Nick says. 

"Is if you're straight," Louis says. 

"Which you are."

There's yet another pause. "Not really," Louis says. "What else have you got in that bag?"

"Fun size Mars bars," Nick says, and then they both sit there and eat a mini Mars bar until Nick runs out of Tropicana and sanity, and makes his excuses to go and lay on his sofa and drink cold coffee straight out of the bottle with the telly on loud. 

~*~

He doesn't see Louis the fit lad from next door for a few days. He hears Arctic Monkeys through the wall, then _What's the Story, Morning Glory_ on repeat a bit, but otherwise Louis the indie kid mostly disappears from Nick's life. 

This is only vaguely disappointing, since it wasn't like they were actual friends, and because Louis clearly has more issues than Nick normally likes to deal with. Plus, he's still getting to grips with his job, which is only marginally better than being unemployed, and only because he's actually fairly hopeful he can pay off all his bills this month and still have enough left over to cultivate a fairly substantial chilled coffee beverage habit. 

Life, as it has a tendency to, continues as normal. 

Until, on Thursday evening, there's a knock at his door. 

"Hello," Louis says. "Do you have any basil or oregano or anything?"

"I had mixed herbs," Nick says stupidly, "but I burnt them as an offering. They're still in the ashtray on the balcony."

There's a careful kind of a pause. "Basil?" Louis suggests. "Oregano?"

"Don't actually know," Nick says. "Do you want to come in and see?"

"Suppose," Louis says. "I've left the pan on, but what's the worst that could happen?"

"Oh god," Nick says, but nevertheless, he leads Louis into his flat and past the bedroom with its airer full of Nick's pants, and into the living room-kitchen. There's a sort of spice rack with whatever he could salvage from his houseshare in London on the counter. "Have at it."

"Chili flakes, cardamom pods, what the fuck are they, cinnamon, sage, garam masala."

"I've never got sage," Nick says. "Could have burnt that instead."

"Cool," Louis says, which Nick suspects is code for 'you're properly weird and maybe you could get back in your box', and yes, Nick intends to do just that once Louis's left. "You have got basil. Can I borrow it?"

"Have at it," Nick says, and then Louis's leaving and the door's closing and Nick is fairly certain that he's never getting that jar back, which is a shame as it came with the set and was refillable and probably would have looked nice if Nick ever got around to making this place a home. 

To get over the embarrassment of his general existence, he goes into the bedroom, groans into the pillow for a couple of minutes, then starts to fold his pants up to put them away. He's just got it all finished when there's another knock at his door. 

It's Louis again, without the jar of basil, but looking a bit flushed in the general cheek area. "There's pasta," he says. "If you want some. It's not awful."

"Um," Nick says. "Okay?"

"Okay," Louis says. "Do you want to come and have it at mine?"

"Sure," Nick says, and he picks up his phone and his keys and pads down the hallway after Louis in only his socks. 

Pasta with Louis. This is totally normal and not weird at all. 

Totally fine. 

~*~

Not awful pasta, is, as Louis had promised, not entirely awful. There's a two pack of garlic bread just out of the oven and a pasta sauce that is mostly chopped tomatoes and Nick's basil with a tin of sweetcorn and some bacon stirred in. There's also, if Nick would like, two cans of Kronenberg in the fridge. 

"Sure," Nick says, because he may as well. The kitchen looks a little bit like someone had a fight with the tomatoes and the tomatoes won, but maybe Louis's kitchen always looks like there's been some kind of explosion. 

The beer's okay and the pasta's fine and the garlic bread is suitably garlicky, so from that perspective it's a perfectly fine evening. Louis remains as fit as ever, which sort of plays in a running loop in Nick's brain whenever he looks at him. There hasn't been that much conversation, but Nick's busy thinking Louis's fit, and Louis is, well, Louis. Quiet and fit. 

"You're gay," Louis says abruptly, just as they're about to dig into the second garlic baguette. 

"Yes," Nick says. "Really quite a lot gay, to be honest."

"Cool," Louis says. "Would you do it with me, if I asked?"

Nick makes a series of tiny movements, each of which signal some form of distress. "Um," he says finally. "What?"

"Gay," Louis says, pink-cheeked. "You are, I might be, I'm pretty certain I'm not monstrous to look at, and I'll blow you if you say yes."

Nick, to his credit, doesn't set the room on fire or fall out of his chair or anything, really. He just sort of looks at Louis, piece of garlic bread still half way to his mouth. 

"I didn't _think_ I was monstrous looking, anyway," Louis says. "But maybe that's just lasses."

"Christ," Nick says. "You're well fit, shut up."

Louis looks pleased for a second, then reverts to some degree of embarrassment. "It's all right if it's a no. I just thought, you know, like. Maybe. I thought I might get it up if it was a lad. Figure out if it was a gay thing, and not a, like, broken dick thing."

"You could, um, try shagging someone you fancied." Nick swallows. "I'm not saying no, by the way. Just that fancying someone might be a better way to see if you've got a broken dick."

Louis looks down at his plate. "It's probably the gay thing," he says, without looking up. "Pretty certain it's just me liking lads and not lasses."

"Just want to be sure?"

"Something like that," Louis says. "Don't want my first time to be some lad I pull and bring back here when I'm drunk."

"I get that," Nick says. "Did you plan this? With the pasta?"

"No. I just forgot to buy basil. Then we were, like, sitting here, and i thought, you know. You're fit. Could fancy you."

"Thanks," Nick says. 

"You are fit though. Nice smile."

"Like a smile, do you?" Nick thinks there's a distinct possibility he might be going mad. 

"Ehh. Always said I liked tits so everything's a bit of a learning experience."

Nick puts his beer down. "You could learn on me, if you want. i'm not doing anything else tonight."

Louis goes red. Nick's fairly certain it's echoed on his own face. 

"We don't have to. It's fine."

"I want to," Louis says. "I want to shag you."

Well, then," Nick says. 

"Well, then," Louis says, and stands up. 

~*~

Louis's bedroom is, like the kitchen, a disaster zone. He seems relatively unbothered by it all, but he does bundle a pile of discarded clothes into another, larger pile by an empty laundry basket in the corner of the room. The duvet is in some kind of mountain on one half of the bed, and rather than make the bed, he just pushes it off the side of the bed and onto the floor, before turning to face Nick with an expression that Nick can just _tell_ is supposed to say something like 'see! look how I cleared up for you!'. Nick attempts to make a face back that says a fairly generic _yes_, but he's not entirely certain how successful he's been. 

Louis grins, but it's a little nervous. "You still up for this?"

"If you are," Nick says. "I'm here for any and all gay learning experiences." Amy is going to laugh so much when she hears about this. _So much_. Nick is all for picking up a good looking boy, but he's so far out of the closet that it's been almost half a lifetime since he last looked inside. Louis, for all of his fit-lad status, appears to have rather set up home in his. Being a tester for gay dicks isn't what Nick normally goes for, but if it helps Louis figure out whether his is broken, or just gay, then maybe Nick can tick a few days off in his 'help other people' mental good place column. 

"Never even kissed a lad before," Louis says. 

"Well, that's easily fixed," Nick says, and steps into Louis's space. "If you want it to be."

"I want," Louis says, and before Nick has the chance to say anything else, Louis touches his hands to Nick's shirt sleeves and steps up onto his toes to press his mouth to Nick's. 

Nick, slightly stupidly, kisses back. 

Louis rocks down onto his heels. He licks his lips. 

"Well?" Nick asks, suddenly thankful they both ate the garlic bread. "How's the dick?"

"Interested," Louis says, and the corners of his mouth turn up. "Like me."

Nick grins. "Good news for everyone, then," he says, and he cups Louis's face in his hands and kisses him again, properly this time, and Louis surges up to meet him and kiss him back. He's done his fair share of picking up fit lads in bars and clubs and parties, but most of his one night stands have been the lopsided cherry on top of a fairly drunken cake, so it's unusual to be kissing someone new after only three quarters of a can of Kronenberg and the best part of a pasta dinner. This might be the first one to have been preceded by consensual garlic, too. 

They kiss, Louis's hands on his arms and Nick's fingers cupping Louis's face, and it's…_nice_. Louis is vaguely unhurried, which is something of a surprise to Nick, and somewhat exploratory, which probably shouldn't be, but still is. Nick gives up touching Louis's face in favour of doing some exploring of his own, down over Louis's back until he gets to his arse, which Nick decides after one squeeze is potentially Louis's best asset. Louis jumps at the touch, but settles back into it, wriggling back into Nick's hands, all the time still kissing him. 

It's all quite bewildering in its ease, and Nick - who normally likes to overthink things - finds himself running to catch up as Louis tugs at Nick's shirt and gets him topless without Nick really recognising it was happening. One minute he's entirely fully clothed, the next he's hopping around on one foot trying to get his sock off as Louis kicks his pants across the room. 

Nick stops hopping about and glances down at Louis's dick, which is at considerably more than half mast. "Stand and deliver," he says, which perhaps isn't his finest moment. "Dick looks all right. Like it's behaving."

"It's doing all right," Louis says, sparing himself a glance but coming back to focus his attention on Nick's dick, which is also behaving appropriately, if leaning to the left. He always jokes his dick reflects his politics, but he's not sure it'll go down well with Louis, who doesn't seem all that political. 

Louis licks his lips. 

"All right?" Nick asks. "How's the sexuality crisis?"

"Hopelessly settled," Louis says, and drops to his knees. "I might not be very good at this."

"I'll cope," Nick says, and to his credit, does. 

Louis is sort of sloppy and a bit untidy, but Nick's never valued neatness in his blowjobs, and anyway, Louis is really very fit indeed, and he's also on his knees for Nick, which rockets him to the top of any list. He chokes a bit but settles himself, wrapping his hand around the base of Nick's dick and squeezing just enough that Nick knows exactly how Louis likes _his_ blowjobs, if the circumstances ever arise. 

He's polite when it comes to his orgasm, nudging Louis back onto his heels and coming into his own palm, Louis looking up at him with flushed cheeks and spit-red, wet lips. 

"Christ," he says, which he really rather genuinely means. "You're a sight for sore eyes."

"Sort of thing my nan says," Louis says, wiping his mouth. 

"Hopefully under different circumstances."

"Hopefully," Louis says. 

"Still a tits man?"

Louis looks up at him. He's on his knees and his dick is hard, the crown bumping up against the curve of Louis's belly. "Pretty certain that's the exact opposite of what I want." 

"Dick seems pretty interested, one way or the other." Nick's stolen a handful of tissues from a box by the side of the bed. He wipes down his hand and chucks them into an overflowing Tesco bag on the floor. "Want me to help you out with that?"

"Happen I would," Louis says. His accent's even more pronounced. "What are you offering?"

"Mostly anything you fancy," Nick says, since Louis really is very attractive and Nick's fairly certain that he's up for pretty much anything. 

"Wank me off, then," Louis says, climbing up off his knees and onto the bed. "Kiss me again if you want."

Nick rolls his eyes and crawls onto the bed and over Louis. "If I want," he says. "You're well fit, you are. And well nice. Like I'm not going to kiss you."

"Well gay too," Louis says. He runs his hands down over Nick's chest as Nick crawls over him. His nails catch in Nick's chest hair, likely on purpose. 

"You all right with that?"

"As right as I'll ever be," Louis says. "Pretty much knew it anyway. Just needed to lob myself off the cliff, you know." 

"Am I the cliff?"

"You're not that tall," Louis says, stroking his thumbs over Nick's nipples so that Nick hisses in a breath. "You're nice, though."

"Nice," Nick says, rolling his eyes as he reaches for the bottle of lube on Louis's bedside table. "You could have gone for anything, like… hot, or whatever, but you went for _nice_." 

"I like nice," Louis says, pinching Nick's nipple as Nick pumps out some of the lube onto his palm and wraps his hand around Louis's dick. Louis lets out a groan as Nick starts to wank him off. "Quite like you, too, if i'm honest."

"Honest's good," Nick says, leaning in so that he can kiss Louis again. "And just so we're clear, when I talked to my friends I called you _the fit lad from next door_."

Louis kisses him again, arching up off the sheets so that his groan is lost in Nick's mouth as Nick tightens his grip, just the way Louis had done to him as he'd sucked him off. "I like this," he says, in between kisses, breathless against Nick's mouth. "Love this."

Nick just grins into Louis's kiss. "Good," he says, teeth nipping at Louis's bottom lip. This is easy, he knows what he's doing, but Louis is amenable and enthusiastic and really fucking fit, and Nick really likes this. He likes _Louis_. 

"We could do this again," Louis tells him, pulling Nick into another kiss. 

"Totally," Nick agrees, but it's rather lost in Louis's kiss, and his little, hitched breaths as Nick fists his cock, slick and loud. This is Louis's first time with a lad, and he's pliant and glorious beneath him, flushed pink and sweet as Nick pulls him off. "I put out for pasta."

"I'll put out for less," Louis says, breathless, hips rocking up. "Gonna come."

"Good," Nick says, tightening his grip. "Come on, love. Come for me."

Louis, reluctantly obedient, frowns as he comes. It's cute. He can't be that bothered about Nick telling him what to do, though, because next thing Nick knows, he's being tugged down and into Louis's arms so he can be kissed again, lazy and sated. 

"All right?" Nick asks, finally. 

Louis rolls his eyes. "Course I am. Jumped off the cliff, didn't I?"

"The gay cliff," Nick says. "How was the landing?"

Louis just looks at him and smiles. "Nice," he says. "Really pretty nice."

Nick rolls off him and onto his back. "Nice," he repeats, in the general direction of the ceiling. There are a few little discoloured damp patches on Louis's ceiling too, like in his flat, so clearly the whole place is going to fall down around their ears at some point. "Don't know if I want to be nice."

"Tough luck," Louis says, shifting so that he's lying on his side. He rubs his nose over Nick's shoulder. "Do you want pudding?"

"What have you got?"

"Custard," Louis says. "It's in a carton in the cupboard."

"Anything to go with it, or are we just sharing the custard?"

"The custard," Louis says. "Didn't know I was having guests. Next time I'll buy us a crumble."

Nick wraps an arm around Louis's shoulders. _Next time_. "Next time?"

"If you'll have me," Louis says. "My dick seems pretty interested in you."

"Well then," Nick says. "If your dick's interested, who am I to say no?"

Louis laughs, and pulls him in for another kiss. 

~*~

"How's your fit lad?" Aims asks, ringing him up at the weekend. 

"Eh," Nick says. "His name's Louis."

"Is he straight?"

Nick glances over at his kitchen, where Louis's making them both a cup of tea. He's in just his pants. "Nah," he says.

"You're in with a chance, then."

Louis turns around and grins at him. His eyes are bright. They're not boyfriends, not anything as clear cut as that, but they might be, sometime soon. In the meantime, there's this. 

"Yeah," Nick says, grinning back. "I'd say I'm in with a chance."

**Author's Note:**

> [Rebloggable Tumblr Post](https://magicalrocketships.tumblr.com/post/188263280503/kind-of-tough-to-tell-a-scruff-stand-and-deliver).


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